Big Heart Charity Art Auction

Chestnut Tree House children’s hospice and Brighton Dome & Festival join forces to host the Big Heart charity art auction in March.

The very first Big Heart auction will display over 200 donated artworks from local, national and celebrity artists, illustrators and photographers including pieces from Raymond Briggs – illustrator of the much-loved The Snowman and Patron of Chestnut Tree House – Jake Wood-Evans, Dion Salvador Lloyd, Pippa Blake, Gary Goodman and Phillipa Cannan.

Each piece of art will be available for purchase, with proceeds helping to support both organisations: Chestnut Tree House, which cares for over 300 terminally ill children in Sussex; and Brighton Dome & Festival, a registered charity committed to providing a groundbreaking arts programme that touches and enriches thousands of lives.

An online gallery - showcasing all participating Big Heart artists and artworks - will be available to view from January 2015. The auction will then go live on eBay for Charity from Thursday 26 February to Sunday 8 March. Alongside the online gallery, Brighton Dome will play host to a public Big Heart exhibition from Tuesday 3 to Friday 6 March. The exhibition is free and will provide an opportunity to see artworks from a wide range of artists.

This partnership builds on collaborative work already undertaken between both organisations through the Umbrella Club, Brighton Dome’s membership club for children and young people with life-limiting conditions and their siblings and carers.

‘Thank you so much for making it possible for us to come to Brighton Dome last week … we had an absolutely fantastic time and were really well taken care of. We have never been to the Dome before and it was wonderful to sit with each other’ Umbrella club parent

And there’s more…

In addition to this we present a range of other outreach and community projects through our Creative Learning team:

Miss Represented – a project working with young women who come to us via the Criminal Justice System. It supports the young participants and creates possibilities to help them to move on more positively with their lives. We have received local and national recognition for our innovative, focussed and targeted approach of this unique arts based project.

‘I genuinely didn’t think I had a future before and now like… there’s so many other ways I can go, like there are more things to choose from. I don’t just want to do it [MR workshops] and then go, I genuinely want to carry on and I wanna actually do something with my life now… I’m doing the Arts Award to get into college to do a lighting course.’ Miss Rep participant

Soulful Singing – we run a weekly drop-in workshop that attracts a good crowd.

We promote Three Score, which is an older people’s contemporary dance company – in conjunction with South East Dance.

Children’s Parade - every year the Children’s Parade kick starts Brighton Festival with 5,000 children from over 80 schools and community groups across the region participating on the day.

We have regular storytelling sessions for the very young.

We have a new ‘Working with’ series and the first was in partnership with one of our Associate Companies, Hydrocracker. This is an opportunity for audiences to engage with professional companies in master classes, improvisation sessions and audition techniques.